Complete Maupassant Original Short Stories | Page 6

with the earth,
and those "deep and delicate roots" which attached him to his native
soil began to grow. It was of Normandy, broad, fresh and virile, that he
would presently demand his inspiration, fervent and eager as a boy's
love; it was in her that he would take refuge when, weary of life, he
would implore a truce, or when he simply wished to work and revive
his energies in old-time joys. It was at this time that was born in him
that voluptuous love of the sea, which in later days could alone
withdraw him from the world, calm him, console him.
In 1870 he lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for, the
family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position. For
several years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he turned
over musty papers, in the uninteresting company of the clerks of the
admiralty.
Then he went into the department of Public Instruction, where
bureaucratic servility is less intolerable. The daily duties are certainly
scarcely more onerous and he had as chiefs, or colleagues, Xavier
Charmes and Leon Dierx, Henry Roujon and Rene Billotte, but his
office looked out on a beautiful melancholy garden with immense plane
trees around which black circles of crows gathered in winter.
Maupassant made two divisions of his spare hours, one for boating, and
the other for literature. Every evening in spring, every free day, he ran
down to the river whose mysterious current veiled in fog or sparkling in
the sun called to him and bewitched him. In the islands in the Seine
between Chatou and Port-Marly, on the banks of Sartrouville and Triel
he was long noted among the population of boatmen, who have now
vanished, for his unwearying biceps, his cynical gaiety of
good-fellowship, his unfailing practical jokes, his broad witticisms.
Sometimes he would row with frantic speed, free and joyous, through
the glowing sunlight on the stream; sometimes, he would wander along
the coast, questioning the sailors, chatting with the ravageurs, or junk
gatherers, or stretched at full length amid the irises and tansy he would

lie for hours watching the frail insects that play on the surface of the
stream, water spiders, or white butterflies, dragon flies, chasing each
other amid the willow leaves, or frogs asleep on the lily-pads.
The rest of his life was taken up by his work. Without ever becoming
despondent, silent and persistent, he accumulated manuscripts, poetry,
criticisms, plays, romances and novels. Every week he docilely
submitted his work to the great Flaubert, the childhood friend of his
mother and his uncle Alfred Le Poittevin. The master had consented to
assist the young man, to reveal to him the secrets that make
chefs-d'oeuvre immortal. It was he who compelled him to make
copious research and to use direct observation and who inculcated in
him a horror of vulgarity and a contempt for facility.
Maupassant himself tells us of those severe initiations in the Rue
Murillo, or in the tent at Croisset; he has recalled the implacable
didactics of his old master, his tender brutality, the paternal advice of
his generous and candid heart. For seven years Flaubert slashed,
pulverized, the awkward attempts of his pupil whose success remained
uncertain.
Suddenly, in a flight of spontaneous perfection, he wrote Boule de Suif.
His master's joy was great and overwhelming. He died two months
later.
Until the end Maupassant remained illuminated by the reflection of the
good, vanished giant, by that touching reflection that comes from the
dead to those souls they have so profoundly stirred. The worship of
Flaubert was a religion from which nothing could distract him, neither
work, nor glory, nor slow moving waves, nor balmy nights.
At the end of his short life, while his mind was still clear: he wrote to a
friend: "I am always thinking of my poor Flaubert, and I say to myself
that I should like to die if I were sure that anyone would think of me in
the same manner."
During these long years of his novitiate Maupassant had entered the
social literary circles. He would remain silent, preoccupied; and if

anyone, astonished at his silence, asked him about his plans he
answered simply: "I am learning my trade." However, under the
pseudonym of Guy de Valmont, he had sent some articles to the
newspapers, and, later, with the approval and by the advice of Flaubert,
he published, in the "Republique des Lettres," poems signed by his
name.
These poems, overflowing with sensuality, where the hymn to the Earth
describes the transports of physical possession, where the impatience of
love expresses itself in loud melancholy appeals like the calls of
animals in the spring nights, are valuable chiefly inasmuch as they
reveal the